


eight's company

by sullypants



Series: a comic miniverse [3]
Category: Archie Comics
Genre: F/M, and everyone else gets in the gd way, in which jughead tries to date betty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:21:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23936761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sullypants/pseuds/sullypants
Summary: Jughead doesn’t have much—or any—dating experience, but he’s certainly witnessed a lot of them over the years, given how much time he spends at Pop’s.Still: he’s pretty sure this is not how things are usually supposed to go.
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Series: a comic miniverse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1725463
Comments: 62
Kudos: 130
Collections: 7th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	eight's company

**Author's Note:**

> Really lost all sense of chill at this point; am just going for it.

Jughead doesn’t have much—or any—dating experience, but he’s certainly witnessed a lot of them over the years, given how much time he spends at Pop’s.

Still: he’s pretty sure this is not how things are usually supposed to go.

  
  
  
  
  


Suddenly they’re a topic of much gossip in the halls of Riverdale High. Jughead’s not surprised; Reggie couldn’t keep a secret to save his life. 

Sure, he’s not used to being the _topic_ of conversation—but it rolls right off his back. He’s very rubber-not-glue about it all.

Betty, though. He worries about what it might be like for Betty.

She’s the golden girl of Riverdale, but she’s also the loser who came second to Veronica Lodge, her own best friend, in an endless competition for the attention of _his_ best friend. 

And now she is with _him_.

(They’re together. They had a conversation about it and everything. It’s one-first-after-another for Jughead lately.)

Jughead feels fine being his supposedly-eccentric self all around town—but now he wonders how that reflects on Betty. 

Everyone _loves_ Archie. He’s just lovable. He’s like a puppy that way. 

(Also in the way he’s terribly coordinated. Honestly, you’d think he’d just bought all new limbs and hadn’t gotten used to them yet.)

Everyone _tolerates_ Jughead. It's very different.

He thinks.

He’s not totally sure, because he’s never cared before this very moment, in which Betty Cooper takes his hand in the central corridor of Riverdale High and leads him into the chem lab, in front of everyone. 

  
  
  
  
  


For their first date, they try to keep it as simple as humanly possible.

This means burgers and shakes at Pop’s, and Jughead feels like he has this one in the bag. This? This is a cakewalk. 

And to begin with, it is. Dating Betty is a lot like being Betty’s friend. 

Well—there’s more kissing involved. That’s nice.

But still—she’s kind, and pretty, and thoughtful; she gets his jokes. Sitting next to Betty in a booth at Pop’s is ideal, Jughead thinks.

Until Archie and Veronica slide into the booth across the table from them. 

  
  
  
  
  


Jughead’s not sure if Archie realizes what he’s plopped himself in the middle of. He’s been spending so much of his free, non-eating, non-gaming, non-sleeping, non-schoolwork, non-babysitting-Jellybean time with Betty lately, and so he hasn’t been able to get a read on how Archie’s handling the news that his standby, second-choice date has finally thrown him over and is now frequently in the habit of ducking into janitor’s closets around school to make out with his best friend.

(Only twice.)

Archie is semi-clueless on the best of days. Unless Reggie’d sat him down and said the words to his face, Jughead’s not sure it mightn’t have otherwise gone in one ear and out the other.

Veronica, though. _Jughead_ knows that _Veronica_ knows gossip like it was her occupation. 

(Actually, for a brief time, it had been a vocation: she’d convinced Mr. Mantle to let her publish blind items in the Riverdale Register. The blinds had ended up all being about her and very obviously so. It hadn't lasted very long.) 

Veronica looks across the booth at Jughead and Betty like the cat that’s caught the canary. But it’s weird, Jughead thinks. She also looks a little excited to see them—and not just to make his night hell—and possibly even a bit happy.

Archie waves Pop down to place an order for fries—and so goes attempt number one at Dating Betty Cooper.

Riverdale: 1, Jones: 0. 

  
  
  
  
  


In the lead up to their second date, Jughead’s feeling a little more confident.

Veronica Lodge wouldn’t be caught dead within a half-mile of a pair of used bowling shoes, let alone a whole bowling alley full of them.

Things start off great. He gets to make out with Betty in the car for a good ten minutes before they even walk into the building. 

And then when they finally get around to bowling, things get a little heated in a different way.

Jughead’s a good bowler, but Betty can hold her own. And she’s competitive; she’s not going down without a fight. 

Their first game comes down to a dead heat in which Jughead just barely eeks out the win. Betty kisses him congratulations. 

That’s another thing that’s great about Betty: she’d be angry at him if he didn’t try to win. She doesn’t want condescension.

Everything is going—dare he even think it—swimmingly. 

No sooner than he has the thought, do Cheryl Blossom (Jughead shudders internally) and Dilton Doiley appear in the next lane, and suddenly Cheryl’s suggesting they compete as teams.

Betty’s too polite to decline their invite. 

Jughead grinds his teeth just a little.

  
  
  
  
  


When Jughead had casually mentioned over dinner that he wouldn’t be around for the family meal on Friday, that he was now dating Betty Cooper and they were going to the movies, the scene around him froze a little. 

For a moment, he’d looked around for an old friend who had this particular talent—but really, it was just shock on his family’s part. 

His mom is, at first, seemingly confused. But then she seems super-pleased. ( _Who doesn’t love Betty?_ Jughead thinks.) 

His father is suspicious (but his father is usually suspicious, so Jughead isn’t too worried.)

Jellybean, as expected, is completely delighted. She immediately begins to question him: can Betty come visit? Will Betty come to dinner? Does this mean she’ll be spending more time at the Jones house? Can Jellybean give her the house tour? Does this mean she kisses Jughead? Why would she _want_ to _kiss_ Jughead? 

Jughead’s a little taken aback.

  
  
  
  
  


The movie date _has_ to work. How could it not? There’s basically no conversation, and they’re sat in a dark room for two or three hours. It’s fail-safe. 

  
  
  
  
  


Of course, it fails spectacularly. 

No sooner have they secured the two largest buckets of popcorn on the concessions menu and added extra liquid-butter to them at the self-serve dispenser, when Kevin Keller and Moose Mason pop up behind them.

All the way into the theater, Kevin talks their ears off. Betty nods politely. Moose is, as is typical, nearly mute. 

And then.

When they move to find seats, Kevin has the temerity to sit between Jughead and Betty.

If Jughead weren’t a pacifist, he thinks he might have found a glove somewhere ( _maybe an usher’d have one?_ ) and thrown down the gauntlet, then and there. 

  
  
  
  
  


He’s near-exasperated, and thinks the world might be conspiring against him.

He tells Betty this, when they find themselves in the janitor’s closet again between third and fourth period. 

Betty smiles up at him ( _so sweetly_ , his heart feels like it gets a little gooey, and the mental image kind of grosses him out.) 

She rubs the pad of her thumb back-and-forth across the top of his cheekbone.

“Why don’t you come to my house, and we’ll have a date there? Just the two of us.”

Jughead sighs and looks down at her.

“That sounds nice. But…”

“But what?”

He watches her as she watches him. She smiles encouragingly. 

He inhales. “You deserve to have a nice date,” he tells her. “A nice date, on the town, among the people—but not distracted by the people,” he insists. 

Betty smiles brightly up at him. She stands on her tip-toes and pecks a kiss to the tip of his nose.

“Juggie,” she tells him, “a date’s a date, so long as we get to spend time together.”

  
  
  
  
  


Per her request, he shows up at the Cooper house Saturday night, at eight o’clock on the dot.

When the door swings open, she pulls him in with a kiss.

Betty leads him into the kitchen and stops by the stove. She waves her arms somewhat theatrically, like a hostess on a game show.

“I thought we might have instant ramen,” she tells him. “The good kind, of course.” She nods her head confidently. 

He groans in delight and when she smiles, he tells her, “I _love_ ramen.”

She giggles. “I know. I boiled some eggs earlier, too, and I prepped some pork belly, so it’s a little more deluxe than just the noodles and dehydrated veggies,” she points at each respective plate where it sits on the counter. “And I bought frozen gyoza, it’s thawing and we can fry them up a little.” 

Jughead notices there are three packages of instant ramen laid out on the counter. He suddenly gets a bad feeling.

“Are we...expecting a third?” 

Betty’s eyes go wide. 

“Oh!” and then she smiles, shaking her head. “No! No—two of these are for you.”

“ _Betty Cooper_ ,” Jughead’s voice comes out so throaty and low even _he’s_ surprised by it. “I could kiss you so hard right now.”

Betty’s cheeks go a bit pink. She does a little self-pleased shimmy, coyly looks over her shoulder at him, and bats her lashes. 

“Well,” she says, winking, “I could be convinced.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Who knows what I'll do next. Anyway, thanks for reading!


End file.
